by Damien Lake
Marik felt inclined to offer words other than the answers he sought, but as Maddock had pointed out, time would be wasted. “My mother died this last summer in the town of Tattersfield. I decided not to stay there and sold the cottage we had lived in to the town council.”
The sergeant considered this for a moment before conferring with the man holding his pack. After hushed whispers, he studied the scroll anew. “Very well, that may be so. There is one other matter I’d like to clear up before I send you on your way.”
He stood waiting when the sergeant suddenly pulled his sword from the sheath at his side. The mounted man swung at his head. Marik missed hearing the sharp intake of breath from his companions as he writhed to avoid the blade.
Not expecting an attack, he’d been unprepared, and dodging the strike from a cold start was near impossible. He twisted in an attempt to jump backward. His feet slid in the dirt, causing him to land hard, sharp stabs of pain racing from his tailbone.
Marik scrambled across the ground fast as he could, trying to find the sergeant, expecting to find the blade’s edge whistling toward him. Instead, he saw the man sitting atop his horse with the sword resting on his shoulder. The sergeant remained grimfaced.
“Very well, I believe you. No assassin would react like that to an attack. You’re free to go.” With that, he kicked his horse into motion.
Marik turned to his companions. Maddock spoke quietly but quickly to a guardsman. After hasty words, the guard mounted his horse and followed his sergeant.
* * * * *
“Apparently someone tried to kill Duke Tilus. They trapped him in a storehouse he was inspecting and set it on fire.”
“Indirect, yet also ineffective if you’re trying to off a man. Lots o’ ways that sort o’ thing can go wrong.”
“Yes. The duke was able to climb out onto the roof where several of his servants saw him. They grabbed tarpaulins from the other nearby storehouses and formed a safety net. He jumped and they saved him.”
“Sounds like amateurs. No professional assassin would leave so much to chance,” Harlan commented.
Marik still smoldered. Being questioned on the road was one thing, but having his belongings pawed through and then placed under suspicion because he owned coin was another. He could hardly wait until they stopped for the night so he could work out his aggressions in a sparring session with Chatham.
They passed the sergeant and his men the next day. He rode back for the city with his men. The sergeant spared not so much as a glance for them. Marik did not especially want to look at him either, then felt like shouting at the man as he passed.
No other disturbances occurred during the passing days. At times the Southern Road crossed into the domain of a different lord, the borders sometimes marked by guard booths but more often by a lone signpost. Maddock always read these signs aloud, a habit he obviously indulged in as custom rather than because he pandered to their newest member’s illiteracy. Chatham rolled his eyes each time Maddock solemnly intoned who’s barony or earldom they were entering.
Marik could see no point in having guards posted on the road, unaffiliated with the larger highwayguard outposts they passed every second day. Several booths stood empty. In others men serving their lord manned the watch. Why? They never stopped travelers on the road, and they did not guard against intruders into their liege’s lands. Anyone could leave the road to walk across the boundary line a hundred yards away without ever being noticed. The few guards manning the watch were too busy talking or eating to glance at the men walking past their station.
His skill with the sword improved until he could almost hold Chatham off when the man felt playful. When he felt serious, Marik would be on the ground within five strokes of his blade. It was often humiliating, but he never slacked in his practice. When he stood before his father he intended to be a fighter worthy of the blade he carried. Assuming he owned a blade worth carrying by then.
One morning when they broke camp, seventeen days after leaving Spirratta, Maddock announced that they should reach Kingshome by noon. It startled Marik, then he wondered why it should. He had known they were drawing closer to their destination, drawing closer to their goal. After consideration, he realized his mood derived from his impending separation from these men who had become his friends.
In Tattersfield, the closest person he could have named as friend had been Puarri, and that might not have truly been the case. While the man held a softer spot in his heart for the youth than the town’s other residents, that stemmed from his friendship with Marik’s father. Otherwise he probably would have been as hard toward him as the rest.
Marik nearly laughed at the notion of Pate and Allen as anything to him other than adversaries. The merchants around the town who had given him jobs did so with the knowledge of his mother’s condition, not from any desire to throw a starving dog a bone.
But these men with whom he’d traveled across half the kingdom had become closer to him than anyone, with the exception of his parents. Talking with Maddock, learning what he could about the world of the road, felt so much like the advice and tidbits of experience his father would gift him with during his visits home. Clashing blades against Chatham every night reminded him deeply of the instruction received when his father finally decided he could follow the training patterns without dropping the sword. Harlan’s grumbling cynicism recalled Rail’s observations of the simple folk around the town. Also, beyond reminding him of his past, he felt able to talk to them and be himself. Marik felt at home on the road as he had not felt in Tattersfield for several years.
Was it any wonder he felt reluctance at the thought of parting from these men?
He still sorted through these jumbled thoughts when Maddock addressed him. “We should still have about an eightday, if my information is correct. Have you any plans once we reach the town?”
Confused, Marik asked, “An eightday? I thought you said we’d reach there today.”
“We’ll reach the town today, but we should still have time before the tryouts commence for applicants desiring to join the band. I wanted to know if you had plans concerning the questions you have about your father.”
The question reminded Marik he still had not thought very long on what he would do once he reached the Crimson Kings. But he could hardly say so in front of them. Instead, he said, “I don’t know what I’ll find there, so how can I make a plan? I thought I’d start by finding the highest ranking mercenary who’s willing to talk to me and go from there.”
Maddock and Chatham nodded once in unison, which seemed funny to Marik, but Harlan studied him strangely, which did not seem funny at all. He knew that look now, familiar from nights in taverns or the few inns they had stayed at. It always appeared in a situation where Harlan felt they were being overcharged, or when the innkeeper took one look at them and claimed all the rooms were full though the common room stood nearly empty. After a minute Harlan stopped giving him the fish eye, as Marik thought of it, and returned his attention to what his feet were doing.
Morning passed. They walked on. Maddock spoke to him about the far north where he had been once. He explained how to survive alone in the snow if Marik ever landed in such a situation, and Marik strove to remember every word he could. That was the problem in his talks with Maddock; everything they spoke of lay elsewhere rather than before them where the younger man could see it. Marik constantly hoped he would remember the sound advice of his mentor/friend if such a time arose when his life depended upon it.
Chatham spent his time annoying Harlan yet again. This time he tossed pebbles by resting them on his thumbnail and flicking them through the air, attempting to land them inside Harlan’s tunic collar. As always, Harlan bore this torment fatalistically, long past the point where Marik would have turned on the fool.
In the distance atop a hill, a blur Marik had taken for a small wood suddenly resolved itself as a tall wall. Given the wall’s length, it must be a defensive measure surrounding a town. He pointed i
t out to Maddock who nodded and confirmed, “That is it, aright. Kingshome.”
Chapter 06
They found Kingshome to be not so much a town as a military base. Rather than settling into an existing town, the mercenary band had dug into a defendable position atop a low hill. The settlement gradually grew around them over the years. Over many years.
Their hill sat north of the road, comprising the tallest lookout in the area. A stream curved around its base with the road bordering its southern bank. From the Southern Road, a short bridge crossed the water, becoming a narrower road leading uphill to Kingshome’s gates.
The walls appeared to be thirty feet tall, built from whole tree trunks with sharpened points. No plant life intruded on the land a hundred yards out from the walls. Marik suspected the band had cleared the land encircled their town to prevent anyone from sneaking close under cover of foliage.
He judged the walls at nearly a half mile long on the southern side, representing a staggering labor effort. From what he’d heard of the Crimson Kings, Marik believed the mercenaries were the town’s sole occupants, so they must have built it themselves. It struck him as curious that the mercenaries had felt the need to fortify their town so heavily this far from the borders.
He liked the look, though. The walls in Spirratta were formidable, true enough, but he felt the people within had forgotten why the barriers existed in the first place. These walls suggested the men who built and manned them were well aware of their purpose. No one in Kingshome would allow the city folk’s complacency to rule their actions.
What caught him off guard lay outside the town. Beyond the cleared area, an entirely separate city of tents and campsites sprouted in mushroom-like clusters. Too many to count, there must be over a hundred various sized tents pitched outside the walls, and twice that number of solitary bedrolls beside stone fire rings. Kingshome appeared to be under siege by a marauding ragtag army. He watched men in a stunning array of armor from shining breastplates to rusty mail sit at private fires while mending travel gear.
Maddock addressed Marik. “We are going to find the organizers and register ourselves. Come and find us after you’ve begun your foray.”
Blinking, feeling two steps behind the others, Marik asked, “Register? You mean all these,” he gestured at the tents surrounding them, “are applicants for the band?”
“Right-o in one-o, lad-o! What did you think they were?”
Marik clamped his mouth shut. Chatham always found a way to turn any response back on him.
“We will set our camp in this madness. As I said, feel free to find us later. Until then, my young friend.” Like mist in a fresh breeze, they vanished into the surrounding encampment.
He suddenly stood alone for the first time since leaving Tattersfield. Its abruptness, the lack of a strong farewell between friends, left his emotions swaying. Then again, they expected him to rejoin them later, so a farewell would be premature. Maddock most likely believed Marik should take these first real steps on his journey alone without anyone holding his hand, taking the brunt of the real experience. That felt like the axeman’s style.
So that only left actually doing what he had come to do. Easy, right? The long journey of nearly a month had finally brought him to the first marker on his search’s path. He doubted very much that his father would still be here, but there must be information that could help him follow the years-old trail. Of that, he felt a burning certainty. Why he felt that so strongly, he did not know, except that there must be at least one person who could point him toward his next destination. There must be!
He resolutely walked uphill to meet the gate guards.
* * * * *
The guards, who eschewed dressing in a specific uniform like their counterparts in Spirratta, hardly seemed to be guarding anything. Their stances were easy where they leaned against the wooden gates. Except Marik could see how they kept a constant eye on the gathering outside their walls. And how their hands, no matter what else they might be doing, never strayed far from their weapons. They struck him not so much as thoughtless at their duties as confident they could handle any trouble that arose; a confidence springing from experience rather than their equipment’s weight. Also unlike the guards in Spirratta.
These were real fighters. Marik liked the air of competent confidence about them, though he mentally prepared to deal with a tougher opponent. He reflected that, his own predilections toward making the most of his skills aside, everywhere in the world he would find men who were strong and confident and those who, while not exactly weak, were less so than others. From this observation struck a thought. Wasn’t such a line of thinking unbearably arrogant considering his own blade skills were still paltry next to Chatham’s? Probably they were less than most of the men here as well.
He forced these distractions away when he drew nearer the men. They had watched him closely for the last hundred feet. While he cleared his mind he realized he had not the faintest idea what to say. It was unlikely the guards would possess knowledge concerning his father’s fate and would probably order him away. Still, suddenly fleeing for no apparent reason would look suspicious. He plowed forward until he stood before the nearest guard, a rather ordinary looking man. Instead of wearing a sword or holding a halberd, he sported a bow nearly as tall as himself with a quiver strapped to his back. In his peripheral vision, Marik could see a guard wearing a blade sidle unobtrusively closer. If Marik started trouble, the guards clearly wanted a man equipped for close-in work nearby.
Marik fumbled to craft his first question when the bowman took the initiative. “If you’re looking to join up, there’s a company of clerks down in that field tent who’ll fill you in on the score.”
“Uh, no. Actually I came here looking for a man.” He did his best to look like an honest person with important business that needed tending to.
“Someone joining up? The clerks down there can help you with all that.” The bowman repeated his gesture toward the tents.
“No, not one of them,” Marik said, already feeling that the conversation had been lost before it had fairly begun. These men wanted to redirect any hassles and were about to send him packing. He may as well spit it all out. “He was a member of the Crimson Kings a few years ago. I was hoping someone here might give me information about what happened while he was with the band and when he left it.”
The man with the bow frowned. He studied Marik anew, his thoughts hidden behind a furled brow. “You don’t look like any debt collector I’ve ever run across.”
“No, not at al—”
“And you don’t look like a magistrate either.”
“I’m trying to find my father!” If he had been hoping the man’s features would soften, the archer’s response quickly dissuaded him of the notion.
“Your daddy, huh? Run out and left your mamma with a pile of debts and a brat in the belly did he?”
Having to talk his way around stubborn guards doing their job was one thing but that comment quickly made Marik lose his temper. “Not every mercenary is a deadbeat, but I guess knowing who my father is puts me a step ahead of most around here!”
That obviously rankled the guards. Their shift in body language said it clearly. He had been unable to control his tongue, having spent too much time around Chatham.
Surprisingly, the man he had directed the comment at kept his cool. Only a slight upturn in the mouth altered his expression. This was a man anticipating a scene he knows will be amusing. “You’re either stronger than you look…or even younger than you seem. If I was in your place right now, I’d be a-turning and walking away before these deadbeats around you start beating.”
Marik would not argue that point, yet felt less inclined to turn tail and scamper. He surely had screwed up and blown it in record time. And yet, the need to find a justifiable reason for his departure, other than weakness, was strong. “How long have those clerks down there been with the band?”
The bowman’s amused smirk twitched further upwar
d. Marik could tell he knew what the younger man was about. “Old Janus in charge’s been around since the twelfth god still had a name.”
“Then I think I will inquire down there after all.” He left the guards, shoulders set, fighting hard to walk at a normal pace.
* * * * *
From the elevated view near the gates, Marik thought he could easily find the large command tent currently housing the Crimson Kings’ clerical staff. Once down within the tent city, he discovered otherwise. The camps for the men hoping to enter the band were as varied as the men themselves. Walking among them was akin to visiting the traveling acrobat caravans that had stopped over in Tattersfield at times.
He marveled at what he saw while he wandered through their midst. Could this many people truly want to join the band? Would the band take all these men? If not, then how would they go about selecting who they wanted from this lot? Many of these fighters looked as though they would take rejection rather badly.
And where was that blasted command tent? Being so much larger than the others it should be easy to locate, yet it evaded his search. Marik switched objectives and sought the road on the assumption it would be nearby so the applicants could find it as they arrived.
Instead, he found a clerk returning from the town after completing a task or perhaps coming to replace one of the others. Marik followed him down the hill to find the clerk’s command center close to the road, as he had figured. He also saw why he’d had trouble finding it.
From the hill’s crown, the tent’s size obviously dwarfed its neighbors. Marik had started his search intending to find the largest tent in the field, except larger was not the same as taller. Looking for the tallest tent had availed him nothing. Presumably this design hindered any enemies seeking to destroy the commanding officers during battle.
The command tent stretched broader than any three others combined while barely being taller than his own head. With the entrance flaps tied back it looked like a portable cave. Inside he saw desks crammed together and several large, rectangular metal boxes, similar to the travel lockers many merchants used to store their documents. Outside, a large awning mounted on poles formed a pavilion under which sat more desks staffed by five busy clerks, each either writing on paper or chasing scrolls rolling from the slanting surfaces. They wore matching garb, consisting of gray tunics over equally gray coarse breeches. A tie-button vest completed the picture, leaving no doubt as to their profession.
